Update. Blackmail. Human Potential.
You may have noticed I haven’t posted any writing for over a month. That’s because I’ve been working on a pretty long essay that I keep trashing and starting over again. I just couldn’t let go of it to work on something else. Finally it is done. I will post it this weekend.
In the future I plan to publish my more serious writing on my website, charleseisenstein.org (once I finish renovating it) and use Substack more like a newsletter, not a publishing platform. I’ll announce the essays and articles here, and I will comment on them too, and share about the process of writing them. So, on Substack I’ll be chatty, more like a social media feed. Also I’ll share and comment on podcasts and things also.
With that, I’ll share a few recent podcasts.
Unlearning, Dr. Espen podcast. Topics: Dystopia vs. Ascension, Finding Personal Guidance, The Process of Unlearning, The Paradox of Letting Go, Rebuilding the World with a New Narrative, The Journey of Separation and Return, The Role of Humor in Seriousness, Message to the World
The Human Potential Podcast. The title sounds so New Agey I’m embarrassed to quote it. Topics include: How consciousness is an expansion of awareness rather than a hierarchy of enlightenment; The unspoken power of words, silence, and intention in shaping reality; The direct link between personal transformation and planetary well-being.
Intentional Life Transformation podcast. Filmed in Costa Rica. I don’t remember what we spoke about, I just remember the vibe was good. I think this will be fortifying to listen to.
The most recent (and controversial) was the Darkhorse Podcast with Bret Weinstein. The title makes it seem like the main topic was RFK Jr., but we actually spent only a few minutes talking about him. The podcast touches on lots of other topics too, including the importance of amnesty and its relation to disclosure. I felt a little constrained by Bret’s allergy to any kind of “spiritual” vocabulary, but I think we had good rapport overall. Anyway, there is speculation afoot that Kennedy is being blackmailed into rabid support for Israel. I tried to make it clear that that is just speculation. I know the man pretty well. He is kind and warm. He is patient with children. He treats his security staff and drivers with the same respect he shows top advisors. While he may have committed some sexual indiscretions, I am certain that he is innocent of any Epstein-island level depravity.
Furthermore, that kind of reasoning collapses a complex problem into a false simplicity. If only it were as simple as “Bad things happen because bad people are doing them.” If only people adopted horrible views because they are horrible people or are being blackmailed. If we dispense with that explanation, the world becomes a lot harder to understand. But understand it we must, if we are to change it.
That is not to say that blackmail isn’t part of the way that the power structure maintains itself. I know it is. But it usually doesn’t work the way people think. I go into that in the podcast too—the three levels of blackmail. But please, don’t go invoking blackmail whenever a public figure voices a position you find repugnant. I get it. It seems inconceivable that someone could sincerely believe something like “The IDF is the most moral army in history.” They couldn’t actually believe that, it must be blackmail, right? Wrong. There are many ways that people arrive at outrageous beliefs. Bobby Kennedy probably thinks that my belief (that Gaza is the latest and most brutal chapter in a decades-long program of ethnic cleansing) is outrageous too. But he doesn’t think I’m being blackmailed by Hamas. So believe me when I tell you, something more subtle is happening here to bring a person to a belief so incongruent with his other beliefs. We have to recognize that if we are ever to change the story of this world.
By the same logic I’ve laid out here, we cannot understand Israel’s actions in Palestine by collapsing the explanation onto the personal evil of Israelis or Jews. There is no such thing as a nation full of bad people, or a religion full of bad people. If we are actually interested in ending the slaughter, we have to let go of such falsely simply explanations and get serious about understanding the conditions that generate dehumanization, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
All right, this kind of chatty format is what most of my future Substack posts will be like. Sometimes (tomorrow for example) I will post intricate treatments of a specific topic that I would call “essays” if that didn’t sound so pretentious. Well maybe I’ll call them that anyway, so as not to pretend to be unpretentious.
Thank you Charles. Regarding the last point, i'd just like to say that in my view this conflict is deliberately misrepresented by the billionaire elite (both israeli and arab) and their narrative managers in a manipulative distorted manner as if it is a conflict between ordinary jews and ordinary muslims, between ordinary israelis and ordinary palestinians, when in reality it is a war waged by the billionaire ruling class (both jewish and arab) on the have-nots (both jewish and arab
Here are a few key facts that clearly illustrate this
1) The Zionist ruling class has spent over a century carrying out a brutal campaign of dispossession, dehumanization, expulsion, torture, abuse, rape, and mass murder against local palestinians—not merely for territorial conquest, but to maintain control over ordinary Israeli Jews. It might not be immediately clear for those not familiar with the dynamics involved but the systematic violence and dispossesion against palestinians actually indirectly serves a dual purpose for the israeli ruling class: 1) to severely economically exploit the Israeli public and enrich themselves. and 2) to prevent our rising up against the billionaire elite in power. How does their ruthless violence against the indigenous palestinians achieves these goals for the israeli elite? Through the "Boogeyman Enemy" principle—a well-documented tactic of elite control (explained in depth here (https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/oppressors-need-bogeyman-enemies).
The relentless cruelty, dispossesion, dehumanization, mass-murder, terrorism and abuse by the zionist state is deliberately designed to provoke Palestinian anger, resistance and backlash, which the zionist regime then frames as an unprovoked antisemite attack against jews for being jews. By deliberately fostering and manufacturing this tribalist hostility and fear, the zionist billionaires (and their representitives in the israeli govt) position themselves as the "indispensable protectors" of Israeli Jews, all while enforcing severe economic exploitation of israelis and suppressing dissent.
The manipulative narrative that the zionist elite and their narrative managers sell us is this: "You face a savage, irrational enemy—one that hates you simply for being Jewish (never mind the decades of occupation and brutal murderous violence we've inflicted on them). Only we, the patriotic billionaires and our political puppets, can shield you from this danger. So you need to rally around the flag and unite behind your great patriotic leader, who really really loves you and really really wants to protect you from that evil enemy over there who is coming to get you. And don't ever dare question our authority over you or think about removing from power over you—lest the ‘antisemitic barbarians’ destroy you."
This is not speculation. Mainstream Israeli sources themselves expose these tactics. For proof, see this profoundly important report https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to.
In short: The oppression of Palestinians is a tool to control Israelis. The real enemy of ordinary israelis isn’t palestinians resisting their dispossesion, massacre and decades of brutal cruel violence and dehumanization—it’s the oligarchs who profit from perpetual tribalist division, fear, hate and war.
2) From its inception, Zionist leadership has pursued an agenda fundamentally hostile to Jewish working-class interests. Even during the Holocaust, their priorities were chillingly clear: **zionist (elite-ruled) state over jewish lives.** When opportunities arose to rescue Jews from Nazi genocide, Zionist leaders actively opposed them, because such efforts did not serve their political goal of establishing a state of their own (under their control). See evidence below. Ziionist ultra-wealthy leaders needed dead Jews to use as bargaining chips to elicit world sympathy and guilt-trip humanity into not objecting when they implemented their planned ethnic-cleansing of the indigenous people to create their state.
This is not speculation. Mainstream Jewish sources themselves document this betrayal—proof that Zionist elites have long sacrificed ordinary Jews for their own ideological and geopolitical ambitions. For the evidence, see this detailed exposé https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/why-really-zionist-leaders-have-always?r=1iggn.
For the manipulative Zionist billionaire ruling class, Jewish lives were NEVER the priority. The priority was always their control and position at the top of the pyramid in their OWN carved-out fiefdom - the israeli state
3) For decades, Israeli rulers have deliberately funded and bolstered Hamas—a policy that continues to this day!! Why? To ensure the "boogeyman enemy" remains a potent threat, justifying perpetual militarization, repression, and public fear. This is not conspiracy; it is well-documented strategy.
Mainstream sources confirm that Israeli leadership—from Netanyahu’s multiple governments to military officials—has repeatedly propped up Hamas to both undermine Palestinian unity, and to manufacture a frightening adversary with which to scare israelis into compliance and loyalty to them (the zionist oligarchs and their political puppets). They do this in order to sustain the manipulative narrative of an existential threat from an irrationally antisemite enemy , ensuring the compliance of ordinary israelis and justifying their endless cycles of brutal mass-murdering attacks on the indigenous people (the cycles that sustain the perpetual tribalist division, fear, hate and war, upon which the ruling class thrive and upon which they depend for their control over us).
Read the proof of this based on mainstream sources here https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-funds-hamas-keeps-it-in-power. And here https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/there-should-not-be-a-jewish-state?r=1iggn
4) Hamas, like its counterparts in the Israeli ruling class, also serves the interests of billionaires—not the people it claims to represent, as exposed here https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/hamas-leaders-are-billionaires-who?r=1iggn, its political leaders (who live outside of palestine) amass obscene wealth while ordinary palestinians suffer and are slaughtered en masse by heavily-propagandized & hypnotized zionist tribalists.
Hamas got votes NOT because Palestinians desired an Islamic theocracy, but because it positioned itself as the lesser of two evils—an alternative to the Palestinian Authority (PA), a corrupt proxy regime bankrolled by Israeli and Western oligarchs to crush Palestinian resistance. The PA exists to enforce the orders of the zionist billionaire ruling class, making Hamas—despite its authoritarianism—appear to ordinary palestinians as the only force willing to confront the murderous evil of Zionist colonization, abuse, torture and dispossesion
This is the same cynical playbook used by right-wing fascists everywhere: Zionist neo-Nazis in Israel (bankrolled by jewish billionaires) win votes by fearmongering about "evil enemies" and promising that "we will protect you from those evil people who for some strange unknown reason are hostile towards the zionist regime (must be antisemitism, no other explanation)", in the exact same way as Hamas gains support by posing as Gaza’s "defenders." The same right-wing billionaires' playbook everywhere. The goal is always the same—to manipulate the 99% (the non-ruling class) into viewing our billionaire oppressors and jailors as our "protectors from that evil enemy over there who is coming to get you".
Ok. I admit I need some help, some increased empathy or something, when a friend who grew up in Israel calmly, rationally explains to me why they must kill as many Palestinians as necessary to destroy armed resistance to their Occupation of Gaza for the security of Israel.